Wake Induced Lucid Dreams, usually referred to by the acronym WILD’s, are the ultimate goal for most lucid dreamers. A WILD involves inducing a lucid dream directly from your normal waking state, with no period of unconsciousness or regular dreaming in-between.
This means you remain conscious and aware throughout the entire time while your body falls asleep, as your mind switches from an external focus directed by your senses, to an internal one created by your subconscious.
A Wake Induced Lucid Dream isn’t a specific technique like the Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dream, but rather one of two overarching categories that cover all the different lucid dream inducing techniques. The other category is Dream Induced Lucid Dreams, which covers all techniques where you become lucid while already within a dream.
The key feature of WILD’s is since you do not need to become unconscious at any stage you are in complete conscious control of the process. This means you do not need to rely on your subconscious to prompt or trigger you into a lucid state, and as a result you can choose when to have your lucid dreams.
Wake Included Lucid Dream Technique
There are many different variations of WILD techniques, as different people have adapted the method to find an approach that works best for them. The steps below outline the basic WILD technique and are a good place to start.
Step 1 – The Secret is Timing
Like telling a good joke, the secret to a successful WILD attempt is all in the timing. You want to be able to move directly from your conscious state into a dream, not into unconscious sleep. To do this your body will need to be at the right place in its sleep cycle. Most dreams occur in the REM phase, so this is the spot to target.
You will need to let your body have enough regular sleep to get through the majority of its non-REM activity, without giving it so much that you won’t feel tired enough to easily fall back asleep again. Between 4.5 and 6 hours is about right.
Set an alarm for this time. It will help if you have to briefly get out of bed to turn the alarm off as this will make sure you conscious mind is awake enough to stay focused.
Step 2 – Relaxed, Still and Focused
Lie back down in bed, find a comfortable position, close your eyes, and relax. Breathing slowly and deeply, turn your attention to your body and take a moment to relax any muscles that feel tight and tense. Once you have chosen a relaxed and comfortable position you want to make sure you can remain perfectly still. This stillness will allow your body to fall asleep while you keep your mind conscious.
Next you will need to choose a phrase to repeat, that will keep your mind alert and keep the idea that you are about to transition into a dream in the forefront of your thoughts. “The next scene I see will be a dream” or even a simple “I’m dreaming” are good examples. In a slow and relaxed way repeat your phrase, while keeping count at the same time. One…I’m dreaming…Two…I’m dreaming…Three…
Step 3 – Hypnagogic Images
After around 10 minutes you will begin to see flashes and swirls of colour, slowly coming together into patterns. These are hypnagogic images, and are the first stage of your mind falling asleep and starting to create dreams.
The images will slowly begin to develop and take more recognisable forms, first objects floating in front of your eyes, then maybe a few snapshots of a full scene, and after this burst of a few seconds of these scenes playing out like a little 3 second movie.
At each stage, let your mind notice and be aware of these images without getting too drawn into them. A relaxed, meditative, detached awareness is the perfect state of mind.
Step 4- Your Body Falls Asleep
Now your body is in the final stage of falling asleep, before your mind fully switches over from paying attention to the external world to generating its own internally, it will do a final check to make really sure you are actually asleep.
It does this by sending a signal to part of your body to move. This will start off as a feeling that you are uncomfortable and want to move, the trick is to stay completely still. Your mind will then reason you must be asleep otherwise you would have moved.
As you transition into the sleeping state three things will happen. Firstly your body will go into ‘sleep paralysis’, where you will be unable to move, this is what prevents you from getting up and acting out your dreams while still asleep.
As this is happening you will experience a sensation of vibrating, an electric like tingling or maybe a feeling that you are falling, rotating or swaying in your bed. Don’t be afraid, this is entirely natural and happens every night as you fall asleep the only difference is you are usual unconscious by this point so aren’t aware of it.
Finally, the hypnagogic imagery will begin to be accompanied by sounds; sometimes it will be a distant humming noise, others it will be voices. The little movies playing out in your mind will become longer and start to have more depth, and the sounds will start to integrate with them.
Step 5 – Step into Your Dream
You will then become aware of your peripheral vision expanding, as one of these scenes becomes a fully-fledged dream. Simply reach or step forward, and with your physical body in sleep paralysis, you will take control of your dream body and enter your dreamworld.
Take a moment to engage as many of your senses as possible, the more of your brain you can involve, the easier it will be to maintain lucidity and the more rich your lucid experience will be.